The Janome free motion quilting foot

I bought the new free motion quilting foot for my Janome 6600 sewing machine while I was making this quilt. What prompted me to buy this new foot was some bobbin tension problems I was having with my machine.

I was using one of my favorite bobbin threads, Superior Bottom Line, and I think it was too thin for my bobbin’s tension. On my Bernina and Pfaff machines I have a second bobbin case adjusted for using thinner weight thread. But with the Janome’s drop in bobbin I did not know how to adjust it. I read through the instruction book twice and found no instructions for tightening it. My dear friend and free motion quilting goddess, Frieda Anderson, has since told me how to adjust it. (There is a tiny screw on the outside of the black bobbin case, I suppose if I pulled the bobbin case out I would have seen that. Never having owned a machine with a drop in bobbin before, I didn’t realize the case came out.)

To try and solve my thread problem I called Superior threads and ordered King Tut Cotton. This was an overall improvement anyways because the heavier weight thread really made the quilting line have more definition.

About this same time I came across Gloria Hanson’s blog post about Janome’s new free-motion quilting foot, Desperate, I thought I would try it out. Janomes FMQ foot is a two part purchase; the foot and another bobbin case with a tiny blue dot on it (to differentiate it from the regular bobbin case with a tiny red dot). Together it runs about $50.

I tried out the new foot with the king Tut cotton and a top stitching needle and had my thread break about every 3 inches. Very frustrating! So I did another Google search and found that there is a Janome 6500 Yahoo group, I figured surely someone there would have an answer. I did a post search and found a couple people recommended a 90/14 quilting needle with this foot. I could not believe that changing my needle from a top stitch to a 90/14 could possibly solve the problem, but I was willing to try anything.

I put a 90/14 in and stepped on the gas, lo and behold, it worked! What a dream. This FMQ foot is wonderful, even though it has a tiny closed loop it is not too hard to see when quilting. The best part about this foot is that it does NOT bounce up and down when stitching. So quilting feels very fluid and smooth, no grabby feeling on the fabric.

I think the real negative, is that you have to unscrew the throat plate to change the bobbin case every time you switch between free motion and other kinds of stitching. It is about three steps more than I want to do when working. I probably won’t switch it all out when doing small stuff where I go back and forth with different stitches a lot, but for free motion quilting a large quilt, it’s the best.

Tote

I made this tote from some collaged and painted fabric that I made. It is the same technique I used for making the fabric for the houses. There will be an article on making this fabric in the April/May Cloth Paper Scissors.

New Houses

I just finished two more houses with a sea life theme.

I always like to put something inside for the person who looks in the door. This one has open doors like I made on a few of the fiesta ornaments.
This one has a flat decorative door.
With a goldfish inside.
Each one is different.

If you are interested in knowing how these are made, I am writing two articles for Cloth Paper Scissors about it. The project will be broken up into two separate articles in consecutive issues coming out this spring. If the whole project was in one issue, it would probably fill half the magazine. So this will be like when one of the quilting magazines has a how-to for a quilt and it runs in a few consecutive issues.

The first issue will have the step by step process that I used to collage and paint the fabric. The next issue will detail the house construction. I will keep you posted for when the articles come out.

The first Cute skirt

This is the first Cute Skirt I made.
The one I said was poofy in the back. I thought about reworking the skirt by ripping out all those stitched and zig zagged seams, But the thought of all that ripping and reworking waistbands was more work than I wanted to do. So I ripped open the casing in the back, leaving it sewn to the skirt. Pulled the elastic out of the way and just restitched the 4 back seams starting about a foot below the waist tapering in until the seams were about 1/4" smaller at the waistband. Then I just continued sewing through the waistband fabric to decrease its length as well. You can not even see it in the gathers. I pinned the waistband back in place then while stretching out the elastic, sewed the casing closed.

Now I have 2 cute Cute Skirts.

The cutest Cute Skirt

I adore this skirt. It is from the Cute Skirts pattern and made with Heather Bailey's gorgeous fabric.


I made a Cute skirt before this one. I haven't posted a picture of it because I was not happy with the fit. I made the size according to my waist and hip measurements on the package. It came out kind of poofy in the back. I went to the flicker skirt group that Kristin at Sew Mama Sew mentioned to me the other day on my other skirt post and lo and behold someone else had made this skirt and had the same problem. She recommended going down a size. I did that with this skirt and voila, a fabulously cute skirt with no poof.

The first skirt

This is the Emily skirt, and the great fabric came from Sew Mama Sew.This is a fairly easy pattern. The pleats worked out great with this particular print. I was able to get the stripe to fall right into the pleat. The one change I will make the next time I make this skirt is to face the whole yoke. As it is now the facing only comes down halfway in the yoke underneath. This would be fine if I had the lithe body of my youth, but now I have a few bumps and soft spots around the middle that are not as well hidden by that short facing.

Sewing?

I can't believe how many beautiful fabrics there are on the market now.

It makes me want to sew *gasp* skirts!

I learned to sew in high school from Ms. Issel the best home-ec teacher ever. In my senior year I spent five of my seven periods a day in either a home-ec class or the art room. I made a lot of my clothes in high school and college and clothes for my kids when they were little. But I lost all desire to make clothes after that. For years the fabrics did not seem terribly interesting and the novelty prints were just dorky. When I starting dyeing and painting fabric I stopped buying printed fabric all together.

It seems like some of the fabric companies are getting wiser bringing in a whole new pool of talent like Heather Bailey, Anna Maria Horner and Denyse Schmidt, to name just a few, who are designing irresistible fabrics. Also we now have great online fabric resources like Sew Mama Sew, Purl Soho and Repro Depot, no longer having to rely on the less than mediocre selections from the big chain fabric stores.